MB Air late 2010 - strange behaviour

[marqus]

Hi there,

thinking about hanging myself. There is this Macbook Air late 2010 on my desk. Brand new ssd (untouched, and therefore not even initialized...). When pushing power button, it chimes and starts. I can let it run with white screen and folder logo for hours. I can also press "option" and select USB devices as I like.
Magsafe is green and yellow, depending on battery installed or not.
Everthing seems to be in order.

But - trying to install 10.5 - 10.7 with USB stick or USB DVD drive it is always the same problem. The apple appears, rotating symbol, progress bar.

THEN, after max 10 seconds of progress bar, the system shuts down completely. Thats it. Nothing else, always the same.

Tried cmd+alt+p+r (5 times), tried ctrl+alt+shift+power. Both work but no change.

Shift+S does not seem to work, at least I cannot see any reaction on that.
As well as trying to reinstall via Internet (D or alt+).
cmd+alt+r does not seem to work either. Nothing works here. It is just the folder symbol after 20 seconds holding the keys down.

using internal keyboard of course.

What could be the problem? Any ideas?

thanks a lot,
Marqus

 

[Superspeed500]

Have you tried to use Internet recovery (Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R)? Take a look at this help article. Your Mac should be capable of Internet recovery if you have the newest EFI-firmware. Another thing you can try is to boot from a different OS, like for example Linux, to see if the same problem occurs.

 

[marqus]

thanks, I thought I already tried the internet installation without success, but now I will try again cause I am not sure if I did it right.

But listen to this: I do own retail/purchased/bought DVDs of both SnowLeopard and Leopard. In addition I have some USB sticks that always worked fine for installation (Lion, ML, Mavericks). None of this worked this morning. Desperately I went the forbidden way (...) and downloaded an image file named sth like "bootable snowleopard usb stick.raw".

I gave it a shot and guess what: the Air is installing SL right in this moment.

That is sth I really dont like and understand. Why is that? Whats could be different?

Its killing me, really. For days now.

Marqus

 

[Superspeed500]

But listen to this: I do own retail/purchased/bought DVDs of both SnowLeopard and Leopard. In addition I have some USB sticks that always worked fine for installation (Lion, ML, Mavericks). None of this worked this morning. Desperately I went the forbidden way (...) and downloaded an image file named sth like "bootable snowleopard usb stick.raw".

I gave it a shot and guess what: the Air is installing SL right in this moment.

That is sth I really dont like and understand. Why is that? Whats could be different?

Strange. Maybe the SSD used is unsupported by the official install mediums? Maybe a missing kext file or something? But that shouldn't prevent the install medium from booting as far as I know.

I had no problems like this when I installed an SSD in my MBP mid-2010, but that device do official support swapping hard drives.

 

[marqus]

Hi again,

SL has finished installing and I thought everything runs Fine. Bit now it asks ne Every few seconds in I want to shutdown...
I can press cancel but it comes up again After 10 seconds.
Is there some Kind of automatic shutown when the Heat is to much?

Thx

 

[Rodan52]

Hi there,

thinking about hanging myself. There is this Macbook Air late 2010 on my desk. Brand new ssd (untouched, and therefore not even initialized...). When pushing power button, it chimes and starts. I can let it run with white screen and folder logo for hours. I can also press "option" and select USB devices as I like.
Magsafe is green and yellow, depending on battery installed or not.
Everthing seems to be in order.

But - trying to install 10.5 - 10.7 with USB stick or USB DVD drive it is always the same problem. The apple appears, rotating symbol, progress bar.

THEN, after max 10 seconds of progress bar, the system shuts down completely. Thats it. Nothing else, always the same.

Tried cmd+alt+p+r (5 times), tried ctrl+alt+shift+power. Both work but no change.

Shift+S does not seem to work, at least I cannot see any reaction on that.
As well as trying to reinstall via Internet (D or alt+).
cmd+alt+r does not seem to work either. Nothing works here. It is just the folder symbol after 20 seconds holding the keys down.

using internal keyboard of course.

What could be the problem? Any ideas?

thanks a lot,
Marqus

[doublepost=1512178966][/doublepost]You have a device with no operating system, therefore it can do nothing on its own. It cannot perform an on line restore because it has no network settings. It must be booted by an operating system of some sort not the internal drive. That means you need a bootable installer.
You cannot create one on the device because you have no operating system to create one with.
So you can see you are in a loop.
Did you make a backup of the previous OS?
To get up and running you either need to optain a bootable installer on say a flash drive which you could create on a functioning mac or purchase one on say Amazon.

 

[Superspeed500]

Hi again,

SL has finished installing and I thought everything runs Fine. Bit now it asks ne Every few seconds in I want to shutdown...
I can press cancel but it comes up again After 10 seconds.
Is there some Kind of automatic shutown when the Heat is to much?

Thx

Have you checked if there is any unusual log entries in for example /var/log/system.log? Maybe there is some kind of script running in the background?

Also: Computers that overheat will usually shutdown right away (just like holding down the power button for about 10 sec).

 

[marqus]

Hi there,

I found the problem of that stressing macbook. As soon as the keyboards ribbon cable is connected to the small board sitting under the touchpad, the system wiil shutdown after a few seconds.
I can connect the smaller ribbon cable connecting the small board to the main board, though. So, the touchpad is working. I have to use an external USB keyboard to use this computer.

If the internal keyboard is properly connected, I cannot use it. I cannot power up the MBA, since none of the buttons seem to work. I have to shorten the small solderpoints on the mainboard next to the ribbon cable connector.

Now it is running Mavericks. Everything else seems to be ok. What the heck could have happened to that keyboard, that make it behave like that?

thx,
Marqus